“Who made that track?” Weetah asked her brother.

“Ibis,” answered Tuki promptly.

“Good boy! His tracks are very plain in the mud, so you can read them clearly. Now what has he been doing?” And for Tuki the daily lesson was on again.

Farther along, by the bank of the lagoon, Wynar pointed out a fresh track to her poddy-bellied toddler.

“Now tell mother who made that track?”

Little Bigabilla gazed at the track with puckered brow. Never, he was sure, had he seen such a track. It was so big, and plain, and altogether unusual. With his eyes growing wider he gazed along those big plain tracks where a “something” had waddled across the mud flat and on into the water. Slowly Bigabilla’s face grew solemn with fright. Could it be—it must be, the track of the terrible Bunyip.

Then Wynar laughed reassuringly, and pointed.

“What is that great big fat bird fishing away out on the lagoon?” she asked.

“Gulamooli the pelican,” whispered Bigabilla.

“Well, it was only old Gulamooli the pelican that made the track. Old father pelican came ashore to visit his wife and children, and those are his tracks across the mud where he went back to the water again to fish for his breakfast, and his family’s breakfast. Now, study those tracks carefully so that you will always know a pelican’s tracks in the mud again. This mud is nice and fresh and squashy. The pelican is a big ‘old man’ and he was heavily laden with food, so his tracks in the squashy mud are much bigger and deeper than they generally are. But memorize them so that you will always recognize not only a big old father pelican’s tracks, but his wife’s and his babies’ as well.”

Away past a clump of wilga-trees five mothers, each with a toddler, made for a sandy patch, nice and fresh after the rain—and found what they wanted. They gathered the toddlers round, then a mother bent down and pointed.

“See!”

The babies gazed down, big-eyed. They saw a wriggly line of little points dotting the sand. Sharp eyes indeed were needed.

“What track is it?” asked a mother.

“Centipede!” replied a baby boy promptly.

“Good boy! You’ll be a great hunter when you grow up. Now you children track that wandery old centipede to his home. He’s up to no good, you’ll find out!”

And the babies, on hands and knees, eagerly started tracking the wandering of the centipede until finally they would find him, some distance away, in his home under a log or stone or piece of bark.

Meanwhile the mothers set about finding and digging yams undisturbed by the babies. When they had finally tracked the centipede a mother would keep them busy again by finding them a beetle’s track to follow, or the track of a lizard, or a frog, or a bush rat, or the wriggling impression a snake had left in crossing a sandy or dusty place—anything at all so that this day should not pass without each child’s learning some little thing, no matter how small, about his great mother and feeder, the bush.